From a recipe for Emergency Chocolate Chip cookies to an ode to Girl Scout Cookies, Edd Kimber understands what we want to bake right now.
Kimber rose to prominence in 2010 as the first winner of the “Great British Baking Show,” a program embraced for its low-key comfort viewing and the everyday people competing — pleasantly. He got his start like many, a person with a day job who took solace in making sweets in his off hours. Now the author of several cookbooks, Kimber may be a professional, but he hasn’t sacrificed his roots as someone who simply loves firing up the oven and pulling out a pan.
From his passionate following on social media as The Boy Who Bakes to his ability to place himself directly in the path of the next big baking trend, Kimber fosters community through his recipes and personable writing.
With directions like how to “scoot” a cookie to get desirable round shapes and descriptions of “soft and sumptuous,” Kimber is clearly talking directly to his audience, even though he’s only met most of them through a screen. Writing for a global audience using wildly different base ingredients, Kimber continues to seek out knowledge and meet fellow bakers exactly where they are.
Ahead of his international book tour, we talked to Kimber about why as a Brit he’s nostalgic for Girl Scout Cookies and which Twin Cities bakeries he plans to visit when he’s in town next week to promote his latest release, “Small Batch Cookies: Deliciously Easy Bakes for One to Six People.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve been right at the place where all of us want to be baking, from comfort baking on television to emergency cookies to cooking for ourselves during the pandemic. Why is this the time for small-batch cookies?
I was trying to think of what I wanted to write about and what would be useful.
During the pandemic, I’d been baking just for me and my partner. Like everybody else, we were bored out of our minds. I was baking more than I had done in a long time and I was making things that were much smaller batches, because it just made sense.